The sperm banks, the paper notes, stand accused of “careless record-keeping, or mishandling or misappropriation of sperm banked for a client’s personal use. Others say the banks use hyped, misleading descriptions to market their donors.” The Times reports on cases in which banks have given out wrong tissues that may lead to offspring with serious genetic-related conditions, and from donors with bad or difficult histories, including cases in which mothers assert they have learned, post hoc, that they will bear children of a different race.

But patient-clients, often with little help and while eager to store or obtain life-giving tissue, are left to fend for themselves in figuring out complexities of genetics, inheritable conditions and illnesses, quality and credibility of donors, and other major health and safety issues that can have major effects on offspring for a lifetime. With society and laws changing, these difficult and harsh decisions now increasingly are falling to gays and lesbians, too.

As I’ve noted before, and what this situation underscores, is that lawsuits in the civil justice system often are a solid course of remedy for the aggrieved when other practical or policy options seem stuck or foreclosed. But what we need are fewer instances of terrible errors that require a lawsuit to provide some measure of justice.

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